On this page
- Departments (1)
-
Text (3)
-
Untitled Article
-
CRITICAL NOTICES.
-
Untitled Article
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
-
-
Transcript
-
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.
Untitled Article
Art . IV . —A Narrative of the Sufferings of a French Protestant Family at the Period of the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes . Written by John Miffault , the Father . Translated , ana now first published , from the Original MS . Butterworth and Son .
This is a very interesting IWe-narrative , drawn iip , as we are told in the Preface , by the ancestor of a poor man now residing in the neighbourhood of Spitalfields , and comprising an account of such of the persecutions in Poitou , at the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes , as came under his own immediate
observation . It has the merit of being a plain , and , we doubt not , honest statement of facts , and is remarkably free from all apparent effort to hide the faults of the Protestant party , or make use of the sufferings inflicted by Catholics as an excuse for abusing Popery . Indeed , the admissions made to the prejudice of his own friends and in favour of the Catholics , come out with singular simplicity . Not so with the modern editor . He
seems to have overlooked the latter , and , with regard to the former , he has this passage : " The omnipotence of Divine grace is displayed in the following pages j the conduct therein recorded shews the suitableness of Christianity to the nature and wants of man , when
placed in situations , or afflicted with evils , which would overwhelm the irreligious with grief and despair . It is after perusing these memoirs that we may reasonably adopt the exclamation , ' Behold the fruits 6 f Christianity ! ' "This is a remarkable instance of the
power which sympathy with the suffering , joined to the influence probably of early prejudice , has over the evidence of plain fact . That Migault and his family experienced much comfort and support from religion , and that the best points of their character were the fruits of
Christianity , we doubt not ; but when our admiration is challenged for a whole class of sufferers , and we are gravely fold to search here for evidences of Divine grace , we are constrained t 6 be Wary . We cannot conceal from our-
Untitled Article
selves the fact , that the very day after the first appearance of the French soldiery at Mougon , every person in the parish , with the exception of about twenty families , ( who had previously made their escape , ) formally renounced Protestantism ; that a single soldier in the parish of Fressine , in less than two hours , induced three of the first families to abjure their religion , merely by
exhibiting some pieces of paper , which he pretended were lodging billets ; that Migault himself not only denied his faith upon an unexpected rencontre with . a dragoon , ( p . 53 , ) but was , on the second persecution , induced to take the same step in a more formal manner , though this appears to have been followed by sincere repentance and a return to his former faith . Truly , it becomes us to be careful how we " cast the first stone . ' *
Having made this observation , we must in candour say , that the Preface contains no passage whereby we can justly infer any design on the part of the editor to make use of this narrative as a handle for bigotry towards Catholics . The wantonness of Louis the XlVth , and the wickedness of many of his agents , are , we believe , admitted on all hands ; and the work is free from the common
Protestant fault of imputing to the spirit of the Catholic religion all the crimes which have signalized those who professed it . It does not appear from this narrative that the Catholics of the Province took any active part in the perse * cutions , excepting where they held
situations immediately under the influence of the Court . On the contrary , we meet with many proofs of the kindness , sympathy and protection shewn by them to the suffering Protestants ; and from what we can gather , Louis seems to have found it a much harder task to overcome
their humanity than to effect the nominal conversion of his Protestant subjects . It would be much fairer to read in these proceedings another of the warnings which history so frequently affords , against the evil consequences of mixing up religion with the despotic policy arid interests of governments , than topics 6 f invective against any opinions . Migault himself appears to have been
Critical Notices.
CRITICAL NOTICES .
Untitled Article
< 119 )
-
-
Citation
-
Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Feb. 2, 1827, page 119, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1793/page/39/
-